With Love From Me To You | 2005 Columbia University Library Collection, Vancouver Public Library Collection

This Is Drawing | 2004

The Brains Never Stop - Various Issues | 2001 - 2004

What is salient though about Coles is that she is an artist in every sense of the word, able to turn processes and places in on themselves. She works to constraints and then expands potential through intimate brushstrokes, colour and mixed media, turning subjects and formats in on themselves, subtly questioning what they can do for her not what she can do for them. Now living and working in London once again she intends to stay here for some time to explore what it is and perhaps most poignantly, what it means to be here.

Feature Artist, March 2016 Issue

The ICA’s favourite Canadian collagist Melanie Coles returns with this shiny-covered delight. This collection of petit A6 fold-outs mashes together horses, statues, elephants, neon-signage and a lot more in a high-contrast Xerox’d analogue glitch. The photocopier melts down industry, nature and commerce into a pocket sized flattened gem. Recommended (obviously).

Created by London-based visual artist Melanie Coles, "Options" is a collage of scattered images and cut-paste frames. Coles is kind of a diamond in the rough. Have you ever checked out her work? You should check out her work.

Born in Canada and based in London, artist Melanie Coles works primarily with collage, although her work spans from video to large-scale installation to 3D optical illusion.

Originating from a town of 4000 in the Northernmost tip of the Great Basin Desert, Coles began using discarded books and objects as the source of her collages. Often abstract or distorted, forms range from miniature sculptures to 90 square foot xerox prints, experimental art zines to 1300 square foot public paintings.

Since graduating from Emily Carr in 2008, Melanie has been especially productive. From ceiling-high collages to LP and magazine art, Melanie has worked on all sorts of projects, and has stuck to a certain principle while doing so. “I try to push myself and try something new,” she says. That includes something new for the viewer, too.

VANCOUVER — It got people talking during the Stanley Cup Playoff: a big, hand-painted sign at the corner of Main Street and 26th Avenue, proposing marriage to "Daniel (or Henrik) Sedin."

Under the proposal, in big block letters painted in red, the seemingly crazy Canucks fan signed her name — Melanie Coles — along with a cellphone number.

It turns out Coles is an artist, and the sign part of a public artwork installation for a show on fandom, called Total Devotion: A Shrine to the Manic Compulsion of Fans.

Coles, an Emily Carr graduate whose work typically engages the public, said she knew she had to incorporate Canuck fever into her piece at the show, which opened June 4th at Little Mountain Gallery.

In the last few weeks, we've all discovered -- the hard way -- just how crazy fans of the Vancouver Canucks can be. But that fanaticism doesn't just involve looting and jumping over burning cars. It can also be terribly romantic.

Consider a giant sign that appeared in the city during the finals. Attached to the side of a building, it asked, in big red letters: "Daniel (or Henrik) Sedin, will you marry me?" Underneath the immodest proposal was a name -- Melanie Coles -- and a phone number.
Sweet, yes. It's charming to think that the captain of the Vancouver Canucks -- or his twin brother -- might be so swayed to swoon by a simple billboard.

But it's also art. Ms. Coles, an installation artist, painted the sign, and she rented the phone just to record what the Sedins -- or anybody else -- might say on her voicemail.

And now she's posted recordings of some of those calls. So, for the record, here are the voices of some people who may, or may not be, who they claim to be.

Melanie Coles is one of the Cheaper Show’s four featured artists and is no stranger to the Vancouver art community. Her most notable pieces include “Where on Earth is Waldo?”—a painted rooftop Waldo to be found on Google Earth—and the recent “Sedin Proposal” in which she left her telephone number and proposed to the twins on a billboard.

Coles will be showing both a large scale art installation and three new collages at the Cheaper Show.“Instead of having a piece for sale for $200, [featured artists] were given the money to spend on supplies. I created a 3D installation in one of the big windows, so you can see it from both the street and the gallery. It’s a large scale 3D collage, so it’s essentially two different pieces from the inside and the outside,” explained Coles.

Melanie Coles painted this message up the street from my apartment. For all those who don’t follow hockey, the Sedins are twin brothers who play for our hockey team, the Vancouver Canucks. This work was created for “Total Devotion” which opened at Little Mountain Gallery last week.

It's a bold statement, i know this, but i am going to say it anyway: this is my favorite layout that i have seen in all of 2011. BOOM! B-lines from vancouver used the work of local collage artist Melanie Coles to put together a perfect looking record. every single panel of this layout could stand alone as its own xerox collage masterpiece, yet they are still able to come together and create a body of images that maintain a cohesive look. on the front cover, a really strong black and white photocopy collage that hits you with a nice pop of red. i love the way she mixes hand drawn elements in with the photographs...

The striking young man - never without his red-and-white-striped top, bobble hat, walking stick and glasses - had a habit of turning up in the most unlikely and crowded of places, from ancient Aztec kingdoms to medieval battlefields.

Melanie Coles, the artist, has released this photo of the figure taken from a helicopter
But now a Canadian artist has brought the game into the 21st Century, by painting an enormous Wally that can be seen by Google Earth satellites...

Canadian artist Melanie Coles is revamping an age-old kid's game with satellites, Google Earth and a brightly colored rooftop painting.

Coles's project, Where on Earth is Waldo?, is a twist on the popular series of books Where's Waldo?, but instead of identifying Waldo among pages of cluttered illustrations, players will hunt for Waldo using the popular virtual globe program, Google Earth. Coles constructed a 55-foot long Waldo, clad in his characteristic red-and-white striped sweater, matching ski cap and glasses, on a rooftop in Vancouver, Canada, though she's keeping mum on the exact location...

On a rooftop, high above the busy city streets, hides a bespectacled boy in a red-and-white striped shirt, just waiting to be found.
Don't worry, Vancouver art student Melanie Coles knows just where he is. She put him up there, after all.

Now Coles, 22, is asking the world to go looking for him using the satellite imaging software of Google Earth.

With Love From Me To You! is a beautiful collection of some of Melanie’s favorite pieces of mail art, both sent and received. It is by gazing at the pages of interesting images, and reading the small blocks of typewriter-text stories that accompany them that one is engaged in the excitement of mail art, inevitably wishing to have received or sent any of the packages which these images adorned. With Love From Me To You! Is the perfect zine for a relatively short and simple introduction to and sampling of mail art, all the while remaining exciting enough to provoke you to participate.